


now you know; you’re free to go

by thefigureinthecorner



Series: swallowing light ‘til we’re fixed from the inside [1]
Category: The Bright Sessions (Podcast)
Genre: F/M, Implied Sexual Content, Pre-Canon, Trans Male Character, Trans Owen Thompson | Agent Green, he’s trans because i’m trans and I like him
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-04
Updated: 2019-07-04
Packaged: 2020-06-03 19:27:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19470589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thefigureinthecorner/pseuds/thefigureinthecorner
Summary: Owen is head over heels in minutes and there’s nothing he can do to deny it.Or, Owen and Joan’s relationship, up until things fall apart.(Title is tentative and also from Bad Liar by Imagine Dragons)





	now you know; you’re free to go

Owen falls in love with Joan the moment she starts speaking.

They’ve been assigned to a project together, something about helping electropaths channel their abilities into more concentrated and manageable areas, and Joan is absolutely brilliant. Her theories, the way she speaks about the work they’re doing, the way her eyes light up with enthusiasm as she goes on— he’s head over heels in minutes and there’s nothing he can do to deny it.

And, well, it doesn’t help that she’s beautiful. Every time she smiles her eyes crinkle up in a way that makes his heart soar, and god he could stare into those eyes for hours. Her face is strong and angular, she has the cutest dimples he’s ever seen, and she’s perfect.

He’s totally screwed.

——

It takes him months to work up the nerve to ask her out. Dinner, at a nice seafood place he knows downtown. She’s mentioned a love of seafood but a lack of cooking skills, and despite him being unable to eat about half the menu because it’s all shellfish, he thinks she’ll really like it.

She loves it. She’s been meaning to try that place, she says when he asks, but she’s never gotten around to it because it’s always seemed a bit too fancy to go alone.

He shows up at her door with flowers, and her smile almost melts him.

——

A few more dates in and he’s pushed up against her bedroom door.

He’s been nervous about this from the beginning of their relationship, but he trusts her. She fumbles with the buttons on his shirt and he runs his fingers through her hair.

The shirt opens to reveal the two twin scars on his chest, and Joan says nothing, just moves in to kiss the freckles along his collarbone.

She asks what he’s okay with, and he’s surprised to find that it’s possible to fall even deeper in love with her. The nervous pit in his stomach melts away as they fall back into her sheets.

——

The moment Joan mentions how much she absolutely despises the view from her apartment, the gears in Owen’s head start turning. Obviously he can’t get her a whole new apartment, that’d be pretty absurd, but maybe…

He calls an old high school friend, a rather artistic woman who he’s kept in touch with even after all these years, and asks if she’d be willing to help him coordinate a mural. She says she’d be glad to, after a few minutes of teasing him— “oooooh, Owen’s in  _ looooove _ ! God, you’re painting her a mural, that’s so cheesy”— and the planning begins.

He chooses flowers. It’s been some time since they’ve started dating now and he’s noticed how happy she gets every time he brings flowers when he comes over. She loves calm, cool colors and soft pastels and deep greens, and he makes sure the mural is mostly made up of those.

The idea is that she’ll leave for work and the painters will start as soon as she’s gone. He’s going to take her out for dinner when they get out, and it’ll be dark enough when she gets home that she won’t see the mural until the next morning.

It works like a charm.

She calls him at 7:15 am, her voice quivering with joy, and he’s never felt happier.

——

A little over a year in, she calls him in a panic late at night to tell him that she thinks her younger brother has gone missing. She’s been trying to call him for over a week now and when she went to his apartment to check on him he didn’t answer her knocking, and her parents haven’t heard from him either though that’s not all that unusual, and she doesn’t know what to  _ do _ , Owen.

He tells her he’ll be over in five. He’ll help her look for Mark.

——

He buys a ring after two years, but he can never find a good time to ask to marry her. It sits heavy in his pocket on most of their dates; none of them seem good enough, special enough for her. She deserves the best proposal he can give her and he doesn’t know what to do, short of spending his life’s savings on a big extravagant trip to Paris or something and proposing there.

He keeps bringing it with him on dates in hopes that maybe he’ll finally grow a spine and work up the nerve, but he never does.

——

When he’s promoted to a level where he’s allowed to know about Tier 5, he sees a man who looks disturbingly familiar. He’s overseeing an experiment— the man’s a mimic, and they’re testing his range with different abilities— and he catches the man’s eye as he walks past.

He’s seen that face. Joan’s showed him pictures of that face. Even if she hadn’t, the man looks so similar to Joan in so many ways that he feels his heart sink through the floor.

He asks, just to make sure, what his name is. He knows what the answer is going to be, but he needs to know, needs to confirm or deny this terrible suspicion.

He says his name is Mark.

The puzzle pieces fall into place and he doesn’t know what he’s going to do.

——

What he doesn’t do is tell Joan.

He should. He knows he should. But she looks so happy and he can’t bring himself to ruin that.

Still. He stops bringing the ring with him. Things are going to go wrong eventually and every time he tries to take it with him it feels like it’s burning a hole into his thigh, like it’s spitting acid at him.

He shoves it in the drawer of his bedside table next to some out-of-date aspirin and an old pair of backup glasses and tries to forget he ever bought it.

He’s still so, so in love with her. But the secrets tumbling around in his mind sour any hopes of a proposal.

——

A few months later, three years into their relationship, Joan finds Mark.

Everything shatters.

**Author's Note:**

> As always I did not edit or proofread before posting l m a o
> 
> Owen being straight may have been confirmed by Lauren Shippen but absolutely nobody ever said he couldn’t be trans, and also I can do what I want
> 
> I’m like Chloe. I’m a big sap. I love love. And I love how in love Owen still is with Joan even after everything that’s happened
> 
> Aaaand I totally plan on writing at least one AM Archives-based sequel to this.


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